Hyper-paucid-ity

I offer the universe a new English gaming term: Hyperpaucidity: a Game Mastering (or Dungeon Mastering) disorder in which the in-game environment is unusually and painfully spartan and lacking, particularly in ambient technology and potential treasures. I'm sure you've been there - your extremely-detailed character enters another room in a building in a city, its dimensions are given ("..about X feet wide by Y feet long.."), some part of your mind ponders which sides of the room "wide" and "long" were meant to describe, and again, nothing...some furniture maybe, but no personal items, nothing in drawers, under beds, nada. Typically, in these shared fantasies, architecture is unremarkable, art items become little more than modernist copies of stale life, and the unusual contents of vessels are easily divided into "coins" and "things found in the DMG". Of course, I've seen the opposite as well: where everyplace the PCs wander into looks like a set taken from D&D the movie (complete with taxidermy cats)...not sure what to call the opposing disorder. Any thoughts?

About Michael Van Ness

An old-school tabletop gamer since 1986, specializing in strange editions of Dungeons and Dragons and home-brew gaming systems.
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